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Madeira Sauce

A sauce made with tomato, brown sauce, mushrooms, truffles, and sherry, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Truffle and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,900 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Madeira Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the Tomato Sauce and Espagnole together for 5 minutes.

  2. Add salt and pepper if needed, then stir in the mushrooms and truffles.

  3. Once heated, stir in the sherry and serve.

  4. Prepare the sauce over boiling water (bain-marie).

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Truffle + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Sherry + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,176 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

  3. Mushroom + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,719 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Espagnole or brown sauce
Provides the rich, thickened brown sauce base and body.
Tomato sauce
Adds acidity and a deeper, rounded flavour to the sauce base.
Truffles
Contribute a strong, earthy aroma that defines the sauce.
Mushrooms
Add savoury depth and a tender, meaty texture.
Sherry
Adds a bright, fruity aroma and gentle acidity to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the sherry once the sauce is heated. Alcohol and delicate aromatic compounds fade with prolonged heat, so adding the sherry near the end and serving promptly keeps its flavour noticeable.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, truffle, sherry, mushroom, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Tomatothe original
  4. Asparagusfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, truffle, sherry, mushroom, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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